An increasing number of ideas, business models and business value relies on the paradigm of big data. Service providers offer analysis of big data, such as internet traffic or social network analysis (SNA) in order to extract insights into the underlying structure or trends in the data. Based on these insights, advertising campaigns or other business or research activities can be managed.
Big data service providers employ powerful data storage servers as well as processing servers, such as virtual machines in a cloud computing environment, in order to process the data and provide their services. However, the volume of the data causes difficulties in using existing methods to process the data.
Any discussion of documents, acts, materials, devices, articles or the like which has been included in the present specification is not to be taken as an admission that any or all of these matters form part of the prior art base or were common general knowledge in the field relevant to the present disclosure as it existed before the priority date of each claim of this application.
Throughout this specification the word “comprise”, or variations such as “comprises” or “comprising”, will be understood to imply the inclusion of a stated element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps, but not the exclusion of any other element, integer or step, or group of elements, integers or steps.